The chart below shows U.S. productivity was substantially higher in the 25 years from 1947-73 than in the 25 years from 1982-07.

The 80 million U.S. Baby-Boomers (born between 1946-64) reached "prime-age," i.e. their peak productive years of 35-54 between 1982-00, which coincides with the greatest structural bull market in U.S. history (the second most productive group is the 55-64 age group, based on education, training, and experience).

The chart also shows even lower productivity over the past four years, and low productivity over the "long-wave" bust cycle from 1973-82.

"Wages have fallen from 51 percent of the economy to 44 percent of the economy in the last 50 years.

Compensation...includes your health care, pension benefits, and employer contributions to Social Security, Medicare and other government programs...as a share of the economy hasn't changed more than a percentage point since 1960.

As it turns out, all those things have increased from about 4.5 percent of the economy in 1960 to about 11 percent of the economy in 2009. As a result, they have eaten into wages.

Health care and other benefit costs have more than doubled as a share of GDP since 1960. Corporate profits have not." (*Chart showed an average general decline in corporate profits as share of GDP from 1947-2010, falling from roughly 11% to 9%).

So, real compensation kept up with real (domestic) growth, and the U.S. was able to consume up to $800 billion a year more than produce, since around 1980 (through trade deficits), while real assets increased substantially (e.g. reflected in household net wealth of $60 trillion).

Could IT be used more efficiently? Well yes but then again what technology couldn't be?

So regardless of the problems with measurment errors, lags, redistributions, etc the end product is normally produced faster and more economically with the use of computers...

Here's an example, even forty plus years before Solow made his comment computers were almost infinitely more crude, more expensive, and more prone to breakdown than they were in '87...

Still for all of that a single troublesome and expensive computer was infinitely better and faster at generating artillery trajectories and bomber flight paths than rooms full of people armed with pencils, paper, slide rules, and books of algorithms...

I'm a bit skeptical about the "not much productivity" claim given the massive dramatic changes that has occurred to many industries including manufacturing.

the things that have powered WalMart and Sam's Club are in large part - computerization of everything from logistics, to inventory control, to electronic transactions.

While the checkout lines are packing customers bags full of goods - a computer is actively building a replenishment shipment from the distribution warehouse than will likely be on a truck the next morning.

this is how WalMart kills the local retail.

They are superior (and more productive) in virtually every measurement.

" I wonder how much faster a computer and printer are compared to a typewriter and copier, for example, and what about quality, e.g. being able to create charts with a computer?"...

You know PT I was thinking that very thing when I was putting my initial comment together after reading your comment...

Consider how relatively cheap it is now a days to do a presentation with charts and data and to be able add a bit of dazzle to it (audio clips and or video clips) because all one needs is a laptop, some office software, and one of those cutesey little projectors...

Now a days you can get both a laptop and projector for somewhat less than the cost of an IBM Selectric II when it was brand new...

It all can be done in hours instead of weeks...

Remember the amount of lead time one needed to have the services of a print shop and the costs of four color charts, graphs, and hardcopy print outs?

Now a days you can shoot the whole thing you've generated to everyone's smart phone or tablet and skip all that time consuming, materials hogging expense...

We'll probably always have some need for copiers and printers but it won't be like it was even five years ago...

In fact Linotype-Hell doesn't make printers and scanners so much as they make 'image setters' now...

Juandos, yes, but that doesn't explain why productivity was so low in the Information Revolution.

For example, before the quick and massive creative-destruction process, mostly from 2000-02, more inputs, e.g. labor and capital, flowed into Information-Age firms (resulting in the tech bubble), although output (measured in revenues) also increased.

However, after 2002, output increased much faster than inputs. Yet, although productivity increased a little, it was still lower after 2002 than between WWII and 1973.

It seems, there should've been much higher productivity in the macroeconomy, because of the Information Revolution.

'Other intangibles, though, remain below the radar. "No one disagrees with this conceptually," says BEA chief Landefeld. "The problem is in the empirical measurement.""'...

Hmmm, just a stray thought here PT but wouldn't some companies loathe giving out any sort of real production numbers for fear that the competition might find a way to use it either directly or indirectly?